From 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon: a morning set of five gardens in Townsite and Westview;

From 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM, we encourage people to have lunch at the Open Air Market on McLeod Rd (open 12:30 – 2:30 pm and conveniently located between the morning and afternoon gardens!)

From 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM: an afternoon set of five more gardens south of town.

There is no fixed order for the gardens, but be sure to visit the morning gardens in the morning and the afternoon ones in the afternoon! See the maps for the overall layout of the tour, and plan your day. Don’t feel that you must see every garden, and leave yourself time to relax and smell the roses (and everything else).

Members of the local chapter of the Master Gardeners Association of BC will be available at Nina Mussellam’s garden in the morning and at Alison Harding’s garden in the afternoon. They will be happy to answer any of your questions about plants, edible or otherwise. If you’re trying to solve a problem in your own garden, they probably know what’s going on!

We will also have a freezer compost demonstration (9:00am – 12:00 pm) at the Brain Injury Society garden, and a fruit tree pruning demonstration (3:30pm – 4:30pm) at Georgia Marvin and Vanessa Sparrow’s garden.

Again this year, we have provided little stamps at each garden (look for the blue or red box in each garden). This lets you stamp your guidebook for each garden you visit so you have a record of the places you saw.

And we are once again holding our Food Literacy Treasure Hunt to enrich your knowledge of food and gardening. The description of each garden in this guidebook contains a clue to something edible or medicinal in that garden. When you have found the answer for each clue, write it into your guidebook in the space provided. Once you have found at least five answers, you can leave your guidebook at the last garden you visit. We’ll be collecting these and drawing for prizes: a $60 gift certificate from Sunshine Organics/Ecossentials, a $40 gift certificate from Springtime Nursery, and a $20 gift certificate from Mother Nature. (Write your name and contact info somewhere on your guidebook, so we can find you!) If you don’t want to hand in this guidebook, you can find an entry form in each garden where you stamp your guidebook.

Thanks in advance to all the gardeners and people who put this year’s tour together – enjoy!